The Conference of the Parties (COP), by its decision 19/CP.8, adopted the revised guidelines for the technical review of greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories from Parties included in Annex I to the Convention (Annex I Parties) to be applied from the year 2003. As part of the inventory review process, the COP requested the secretariat to conduct an annual synthesis and assessment of GHG inventories for all Annex I Parties. The purposes of the synthesis and assessment are to facilitate the consideration of inventory data and other information across Parties, and to identify issues for further consideration during the reviews of individual inventories. As part of the annual inventory review process under the guidelines for review under Article 8 of the Kyoto Protocol, the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), by its decision 22/CMP.1, requested the secretariat to conduct, under the direction of the expert review team, a standardized set of data comparisons to be performed on the common reporting format (CRF) submissions to be used in the review process. The COP, by its decision 14/CP.11, updated the UNFCCC reporting guidelines on annual inventories and decided that Annex I Parties shall use the CRF tables for the purpose of submission of the annual inventory due in and after 2007. Similarly, the CMP, by its decision 6/CMP.3, decided that Parties shall use, for reporting information supplementary to annual GHG inventory information in the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, tables to be included in an annex to the national inventory report (NIR), as well as the tables of the CRF for the purpose of submission of information on anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by sources and removals by sinks from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities under Article 3, paragraph 3, and, if any, elected activities under Article 3, paragraph 4, of the Kyoto Protocol. The synthesis and assessment is prepared in two parts. Part I provides information to allow comparisons across Annex I Parties, as well as descriptions of common methodological issues. Part II provides a preliminary analysis of individual Annex I Party inventories, in particular identifies outstanding issues requiring clarification during the individual review stage of the process. In accordance with decision 19/CP.8, Part I of this synthesis and assessment report has been sent to Parties for comment prior to publication on the UNFCCC web site. Part II will be sent to the respective Party for comments and, together with the comments from the respective Party, will be provided to the corresponding expert review team as input for the individual review; Part II will not be published on the UNFCCC web site